The Decade of the Victory for Freedom and Justice in Palestine. by BOUTHAINA SHAABAN

…. an Israeli think tank tried to distort what is going on in the international arena. The Reut Institute report to the Israeli government Thursday said that “Israel faces a global campaign of delegitimization (Haaretz, Feb. 12, 2010), and that “the campaign is the work of a worldwide network of private individuals and organizations. They have no hierarchy or overall commander, but work together based on a joint ideology – portraying Israel as a pariah state and denying its right to exist”. The report names the main centers of this campaign as London, Brussels, Madrid, Toronto, San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley. …

… The alienation between Arabs and Jews can be seen everywhere. It has not arisen solely in the context of the national conflict, but is rather a result of an establishment policy which has expropriated Arabs’ lands to build communities “for Jews only” and has pushed the Arab inhabitants into localities under an “ethno-Zionist siege” on all sides. … national alienation is evident in the apartheid reflected throughout the media. …

… Among the proposed legislation mentioned in the report is a bill that would jail for a year anyone who publishes or says something that would “bring contempt upon or discomfort to the country.” That proposed bill was passed in a first reading in the Knesset.

Another bill mentioned, authored by Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz, would change all street names in Israel to “Hebrew names.” Other bills the report includes are those that relate to who can purchase land and the so-called Nakba bill, which would ban state funding for events marking Israel’s independence as a day of mourning, and that was also passed in a first reading last week and is undergoing minor changes. …

(JTA) — A student has brought a federal civil rights lawsuit against the University of California, Berkeley, saying the university did not protect her from being attacked because she is Jewish. …

Her suit alleges that Husam Zakharia, a fellow student and the head of Students for Justice in Palestine, rammed into her with a metal cart because of the pro-Israel sign she was holding during a pro-Israel demonstration on the Berkeley campus on March 5, 2010.

The rally, organized by the student Zionist groupTikvah, was a counter to anti-Israel events being held that same week as part of Israel Apartheid Week.

The complaint alleges that the Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Student Association, another pro-Palestinian group on campus, harass and attack Jewish students, and that the university knows about it and has not taken sufficient steps to protect its Jewish students. …